HSA Department Updates, Jan. 2025

Sabbaticals Beginning and Ending

The department welcomes David Cubek (Professor of Music) and Vivien Hamilton (Professor of the History of Science) back from their fall-semester sabbaticals.  Alfred Flores (Associate Professor of Asian-American Studies) and Ken Fandell (Professor of Art and Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson Chair in Arts and the Humanities) will be on sabbatical for the spring semester.

Promotion News

Two department faculty, Charles Kamm and David Cubek, have been promoted to the rank of full professor effective this academic year.  Charles Kamm, Professor of Music, joined our department in 2005 and is an accomplished conductor and tenor and a scholar of Scandinavian choral music.  He leads the choirs of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer Colleges, and Scripps Colleges and is currently chair of Joint Music.  David Cubek, Professor of Music, leads the Claremont Concert Orchestra and is music director and conductor of the Peninsula Symphony in Palos Verdes, California.  He is an internationally-known conductor who works avidly to bring new music to concert audiences.  He joined our department in 2010.  Congratulations to both on their well-earned promotions!

Flores Wins ASIANetwork Grant

Associate Professor of Asian American Studies Alfred Flores has been awarded an Asian American and Pacific Islander Voices and Stories faculty fellow grant (2025-2026) from the ASIANetwork, a nonprofit supported by a consortium of liberal arts colleges throughout North America that works “to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education” (What is ASIANetwork?).  Professor Flores notes that this grant will “support my partnership with the Marshallese Youth of Orange County (MYOC). The mini-grant is funded by the Mellon Foundation which will provide us with funds to conduct oral history interviews with the Marshallese of southern California.” 

Fandell Appointed to Two Residencies

Ken Fandell, Professor of Art and Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson Chair in Arts and the Humanities, has been appointed to two artist residencies during his current sabbatical.  During part of January and February he will be Joshua Tree National Park’s Artist in Residence, working on a variegated long-term project dealing with California landscapes.  In June, he will participate in the Wilappa Bay artist in residency program (Oysterville, Washington) along with five other visual, musical, and literary artists, working on a multi-modal visual-and-text project concerning the ecosystem of Willapa Bay and its environs.

Hamilton on the History of Technology

Vivien Hamilton, Professor of the History of Science, has a new article on this history of x-ray technology in dentistry.  Her article “Dental X-rays and the Imagined Patient” appears in Technology, Health, and the Patient Consumer in the Twentieth Century, edited by Rachel Elder and Thomas Schlich and published by Manchester University Press.